Juulia Turkkila and Matthias Versluis continue to Saturday's free dance in sixth place. Another Finnish couple also made it to the top ten.
Kaunas
Medal I guess I ran away too far from the Finnish ice dancing couple Juulia Turkkila–Matthias Versluis in the European Figure Skating Championships.
The pair cleared Friday's rhythm dance almost cleanly, but the mistakes that happened to Versluis in the step series cost enough that the Finns leave in sixth place for Saturday's free dance.
The Finns had 4.37 points left to defend their bronze medal from last year.
“The competition is long. You can't do anything but focus on your own performance. European ice dancing is at a high level. We have to leave here on Saturday just to fight,” Turkkila said.
“Qualitatively, everything was right, but technically there was inaccuracy. At least a couple of points were lost in that,” Versluis continued.
A year ago in Espoo, Turkkila and Versluis were barely third after the rhythm dance. In Kaunas, the situation turned the other way.
Czech sibling pair Natalie Taschlerova/Filip Taschler is only 0.32 points ahead of the Finns. With the French in fourth place Evgeniia Lopareva and With Geoffrey Brissaud has 78.47 points, while the Finns have 76.36.
The top three is already at over 80 points in its own decade. In first place are the reigning European champions, Italy Charlene Guignard and Marco Fabbri (86,80).
The noise at the Žalgiris Arena in Kaunas was deafening when the Lithuanian couple Allison Reed/Saulius Ambrulevicius came third (80.73). British couple Lilah Fear/ Lewis Gibson is second (85.20), so there will still be a tight race for EC gold.
Sixth place is a shame because Turkkila and Versluis dropped out of the last, or hot, group. It can affect the judges' scores in the free dance.
“We have a strong free program. We trust that we will get good marks for it,” said Versluis.
Juho Pirinen and Yuka Orihara skated an almost flawless rhythmic dance.
Also Finland's second pair Yuka Orihara/Juho Pirinen continues the race in the top ten. In the free dance, the goal is to stay in tenth place, which is the couple's goal. There are more than six points to the next place.
“Then we will see a show in the final. It's our trademark. In free dance, we get to show what we know and what we are really good at,” Pirinen said
Pirinen and Orihara managed Friday's rhythmic dance almost flawlessly. In two of the five required elements – twissel and step sequence – the level was lower than it should have been, but they were more fine-tuning than actual mistakes.
A sm
all reduction in the requirement level brought 68.59 points. This season, the couple has scored 69.52 in the rhythm dance at their best.
“Very good points. The points are always tighter in the European Championships than in other competitions. It's a great achievement when two Finnish couples are in their twenties”, the couple's coach Maurizio Margaglio said.
European Championships are the main competitions of the season for Piris and Orihara, although the world championships are also ahead in the spring.
“This is the number one race of the season for us. In the World Championships, the level is too hard. Already from the beginning of the season, we have known that this is the competition where we have to show. Now the first stage has been completed and we are on the positive side. Due to the point reductions, I'm not completely satisfied,” Pirinen said.
Orihara said that she was so excited about the rhythmic dance that crying was not far away.
“I'm really relieved that we got a clean skate when there were no direct mistakes. We didn't give up the draw,” Orihara said.
Ice dancing has a record number of couples, 33, which indicates the growing popularity of the sport in Europe.
Even if they don't get a medal, Saturday is a real super day for Finnish figure skaters.
In addition to ice dancers Nella Pelkonen and Emmi Peltonen compete in the women's singles final.
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